


Shard

by AlmostCustard



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Depression, Emotional Trauma, don't read if you don't like depressing things, emotional angst, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 22:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17610542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmostCustard/pseuds/AlmostCustard
Summary: This is a story about an Apprentice, but not exactly fitting into the Arcana timeline. IDK, like- an apprentice that isn't also Julian's, but still works in the dungeon. The Apprentice experiences emotional turmoil, and turns to unhealthy coping mechanisms to alleviate the pain. Will focus on Valdemar later~





	Shard

Sometimes it was all a bit too much. Sometimes the cries were just too loud, and the blood was just too red. Sometimes the gazes of the other doctors were just too dead inside, and the laugh of the head physician was just too disturbing. With every passing day, with every incurable patient, your frustration and desperation filled you up until you felt you were cracking under the pressure.

            At the moment, you were sitting in your room, trying to calm your breathing. For the last hour and a half, you have been suffocating, and no matter how deep you breathed, you could not gather enough oxygen.

            You needed some sort of RELEASE. Something to relieve the pressure of your turmoil inside. Blindly, you grabbed the vase on the table beside you, and smashed it to the ground. The destruction didn’t help that much.

            Gasping you fell to your knees, the shards of glass cutting your skin painfully, but leaving behind a feeling of (right). Suddenly, you remember hearing stories of people cutting themselves in order to ease their internal pain.

Slowly, you grabbed a larger piece of broken glass (this one had a flower on it!), and tentatively pricked your forearm. The pain stung for a second, and then left behind the same feeling of (right). Setting your jaw, you made a larger cut, this one slowly dripping blood, and you nearly (sobbed) with the sudden feeling of (release).

You knew this was wrong, deep down, but you couldn’t stop from your sudden need for this.

After a few more marks, you realized the mess you were making all over your floor, and decided to clean up, feeling (so much) better than how you did only minutes before.

You were thankful for your medical prowess, and that your actions occurred off the carpet, for clean-up didn’t take that long.

You were also thankful for the long medical outfit, for it would easily cover up any bandages on your body.

The doctors didn’t understand why your mood improved slightly. It was mostly unnoticeable, but the few doctors you were closer to realized something had changed. Perhaps you regained hope, or perhaps you have reached the stage of acceptance to the fate of Vesuvia? They didn’t really care. After all, that miniscule mood shift helped (them) slightly, even if no one was willing to admit it…

As you were working on a patient (at this point only making them more comfortable, they were close to death), your face twitched when you realized the stench of the dungeons could easily hide the strong odor of blood that may be radiating off of you. (You were terrified that the Quaestor might find out, and though you had no idea what they might do to you, you were sure it wasn’t going to be anything good).

The vase shard, over the next few weeks, became your best friend. After every stressful day, or when everything became too much, you closed yourself in your room (you were one of the only doctors who had a room in the palace, where you strongly preferred to the office in the dungeon). You rarely cut more scars, instead repeatedly opening the ones already existing.

You did also make sure to sanitize everything, infection was the last thing you wanted.

Today, everything was (too much). So many patients were lost, and so many doctors were gone, that the dungeon started to feel a bit empty. Julian was locked into his own room, devastated at the death of his apprentice, and only you, the Quaestor, and a handful of doctors were still working towards a cure.

You remembered the Quaestor watching your every move today, their blood red stare on you as you discarded a corpse into the beetle pit. Their footsteps were the thing that broke you out of your spiral into the (crunching noises) and before they were close to you, you fled. You didn’t stop sprinting until you were in your room, sobbing.

You couldn’t take it anymore, you needed release, you NEEDED RELEASE.

Running to the bathroom, you clawed at the mirror, pulling it slightly from the wall to fit your hand behind. Desperately, you grabbed your shard from its hiding place, your hand being cut in the process, and dragged the glass over one of your old cuts, reopening the nearly closed wound. Blood was dripping in the sink, but it wasn’t ENOUGH.

Groaning in frustration, you quickly sat down in the tub (you’ve come to realize the tub is the easiest to clean) and made another cut. It still wasn’t enough.

Desperately, you kept cutting, a faint voice in the back of your mind was screaming to ‘stop! You are going to far this time!’, but you ignored it in favor of RELEASE.

You blinked your eyes, and you were lying against the tub, the shard suddenly gone from your hand. You blinked and noticed all of the red staining your clothes. You blinked an realized you went too far this time, you cut a little too much, a little too deep. You blinked and accepted that there would be one less doctor now, and that the Quaestor probably wouldn’t care. You blinked and realized that thought made you sad, despite how scary everyone found them, you would be sad to never see (Valdemar) again. You blinked and rested your head on the edge of the tub, not hearing the click of your door through the fog in your head. You blinked and stared into the most beautiful red you’ve ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter will be in a DIFFERENT someone's perspective UwU


End file.
